An Italian's Italy

...In Calabria, as well as in Sicily, a jinx with a flair for irony seems to be at work...

...Barzini is vexed with foreign trav- elers who see nothing but sunny Italy when they go to the peninsula...

...These floods are the re- sult not of God's wrath with the Ital- ians, but of the inability to tackle the elementary problems of soil conserva- tion and river control...

...He records the decline of the old peasant Mafia and the rise of the more vicious urban Mafia based on drug trafficking, smuggling, and big busi- ness...

...Is it caused by the confusion, instability, and injustice that have permeated all reaches of Italian life for centuries...

...GABRIEL GERSH, a free lance writer and critic, is a student of Italian history and has made numerous journeys to the peninsula...

...The tourist sees or senses little of the doomed feeling that afflicts so man) Italians...

...although (by a par- adox which he himself undoubtedly relishes) almost the only one about which he reaches no satisfying conclu- sion is the Mafia...

...An Italian's Italy From Caesar to the Mafia: Sketches of Italian Life, by Luigi Barzini...

...For in- stance, unlike many Italian intellectu- als, he has some sympathy for the lasi House of Savoy, abolished by the peo- ple in a plebiscite...

...In this age of packaged tours and social consciousness, most of the millions of people who con- verge on Italy every summer prefer to keep their backs to the land and to stare at the blue sea...

...But what made the book a tour de force was Barzini's ability to write English with style, subtlety, and wit and his mastery of the journalistic technique of always being interesting...

...LEONARD BAKER is an experi- enced reporter based in Washington...

...Italians enjoy the exciting haz- ards of an orderless world in which anybody can win the jackpot," but "they do not have an inborn taste for risk...

...He notes that the phenomenon is peculiar to Western Sicily, that it has never established it- self in the eastern part of the island (where political, social, and economic conditions would seem favorable to it), and that some of its characteristics and techniques have been successfully transplanted to the much different environment of the United States...

...Reviewed by Gabriel Gersh During the age of the grand tour, mystified by the contradictions between timeless peasant poverty and the magnificence of arts and cities, aristocratic visitors to Italy turned their backs to the sea and their eyes to the land...

...This is not what the people want...

...WILLIAM CHAPMAN is a national af- fairs correspondent for The Washington Post...

...Barzini argues that the vast sums invested in the south are being spent on the wrong projects, that its in- digenous assets, human and economic, are being neglected, while the attempt to establish alien northern industries there results in much of the money flowing back to enrich the north...

...THE REVIEWERS WILLIAM L. O'NEILL, professor of his- tory at Rutgers, is the author of "Com- ing Apart: An Informal History of Amer- ica in the 1960s," just published by Quadrangle and reviewed in these pages last month by Karl E. Meyer...

...Machiavelli's Prince has always been their ideal of government...

...mil- lions vote Communist today because they prefer the law and order that the Communists would try to impose on confusion and anarchy...

...Their time span is indicated by his title and their subjects range fron historical sketches, sophisticated pro- files, brilliant reportages of minor bui characteristic incidents, to essays or the intricacies of Italy's social and po- litical life...

...The man who can answer most of their questions, who can transform a packaged tour into an intelligent one is Luigi Barzini...

...He became well known to the American public through his book, The Italians, in which he gave a rather oversimplified portrait of his fellow countrymen...

...The great floods that dramatically submerge larger and larger parts of Italy every year exemplify the plight of the country...

...If his latest deployment of these tal- ents does not quite repeat the tour de force of his earlier book, it is be cause he has assembled in From Caesa\ to the Mafia a score of unconnectec studies...

...JOHN HUENEFELD wrote "The Community Activist's Handbook," pub- lished last spring by Beacon Press...

...It is somewhat odd that a man of Barzini's detachmenl and cynicism should show this kind of sympathy, since the House of Savo) was compromised with Fascism, anc Umberto, the last member of the dy- nasty, had even been the commander- in-chief during the embarrassing at- tack on the French Riviera wher France was being defeated by the Nazis...

...Among the other political themes discussed in this book is the distortion of all vital decisions for a quarter of a century by "the dramatic necessity to prevent an imminent Communist take- over...

...This is a strong generalization, but Barzini backs it up by pointing out that "confusion breeds injustice," and that too much injustice can only breed despair...

...All the planning and inven- tiveness have gone into these products...

...the gap between persons, classes, and regions increases every year...

...He foresees an impact upon it of Sicily's gradual transformation from a distant, exotic island into part of an Italy which is becoming the southern extension of a uniform Europe...

...O'Neill also wrote "Everyone Was Brave: A History of Feminism in Amer- ica...

...Only the charm, the ingenu- ity, the genius for beauty are revealed The ancient despondency is unnoticed, What is behind it...

...As a consequence, the disparity between the two regions widens...

...Fundamental problems are neg- lected and become insoluble...

...Barzini touches no theme which he does not clarify...

...Indeed, the art of "getting along"—cleverly, in- triguingly, industriously, deviously—is one of the oldest in Italy...

...at the enchanting order of man-made landscapes and the persistent political and social confusion...

...Perhaps the most interesting part oj this book is the glimpse it gives us o] Barzini's opinions of the many politica controversies and passions that have convulsed Italy for so long...

...The Italians "watch the cun- ning and unscrupulous, the friends of the powerful people, gain their ends with ease: the vast majority of citizens is unprotected, hopeless, often robbed of its rights...

...Yet there must be thousands who wonder for a moment at the bizarre juxtaposition of cupolas and the auto- strade, glass and steel skyscrapers and enclosed villages on top of hills...

...They are among the most wretched, desperate, and frightened people in the Western world...

...While Venice is being submerged in water, Italian-de- signed products conquer the Common Market...

...Thou- sands of tourists will find this bool< amiable company while they recline on Italy's beautiful but polluted beaches...

...If they did they would now be happy...

...all the sloth and inefficiency have gone into Venice...

...The Italians was unpopular in Italy because his compatriots believed that he had pro- jected a clever caricature of them: he had provided material to sustain the Anglo-Saxon idea of the legendary Italian...

...But this opinion, however mis- guided, does not mar the pleasure ol reading Barzini's illuminating com- ments on his fellow countrymen...

...But Barzini suggests that when an art is so old and so well-entrenched, an equally old re- bellion against it is bound to be pres- ent...

...The favorite formula of an alli- ance between progressive Romar Catholics and the anti-Communist Lefl is vitiated, as Barzini observes, by the fact that there is no Italian Cath- olic Church led by an Italian Primate: the Bishop of Rome is the head of i universal Church who must considei the welfare not only of Italy, but alsc of millions of Catholics in Communisi countries...

...Their preference "has always been for a well-ordered, static, decorous, pater- nalistic society^ as tidy and symmetri- cal as one of their baroque regula- tions...

...The tourist, gasping at the beauty and engineering skill of the new autostrade, knows little, if anything, of the catastrophic failures alongside it— the empty factories, the automated plants that have reduced the need for workers, the agriculture that finds no markets...

...They are not...